Renders Give a Glimpse of Apple's Upcoming Headquarters

It's circular to promote collaboration

Before he passed away, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs helped design his company's new headquarters with renowned architect Sir Norman Robert Foster. Called "Apple Campus 2," the new headquarters will reside on a 176-acre plot in Cupertino. The main building -- a circular spaceship (the Mothership) intentionally devoid of rectangles and squares which, along with long buildings and buildings with more than four stories, have been deemed to inhibit collaboration -- will take up 2.8 million square feet with room for 13,000 employees.

While knowledge of the planned campus isn't new, Wired dug up 20 never-before-seen renders of the Mothership and surrounding area, which consists of a man-made forest in the northeast corner of Cupertino. There's a two-level, 2,000 space parking garage underneath the main facility. There's also an underground auditorium, a 90,000 square-foot cafeteria, and all kinds of excess.

Estimates have the project's budget at $5 billion and growing. As it stands today, the site is 20 percent landscape, the rest covered by buildings and asphalt, Wired says. The goal is to have it complete by 2016, with every last detail planned out, including the placement of every single tree. When it's finished, it will be 80 percent landscape. Due to the climate, there won't be a need for air conditioning or heating because of natural ventilation. The facility will also run on 100 percent renewable energy, having one of the largest solar arrays in the world.

No need for AC or heat? I have trouble buying it, but I hope they aren't dumb enough to build this place without heating & AC as then they'd be screwed if they should need it.

Solar is better than those infernal bird-murdering blenders they call windmills. Both semi-ironically fund China's effort to nuke California but solar is at least somewhat reliable and doesn't have the fugliness or semi-controversial subsonics of wind.

so it's modeled after their business architecture? once you're inside you can't get out of the walled garden?

Seriously, buildings and spaces don't magically make people collaborate any more or less now than they did two hundred years ago. Having a round building just makes it harder for the plumbers to do their jobs.

It seems that it would be a lot easier to "collaborate" with people situated at across the circle from you if there were a way to walk across the diameter of the circle. I guess that would require a rectangle though so... (eyeroll)

Yes, yes, I understand the concept of a high water table ... My point was the same but the execution of it in Apple's design was for green-roofed parking ramps ... not really underground per-say, just under the ground of a manufactured garden/green-space.

Disney does have tunnels at all their facilities for the character actors, although to your point that was technically "level 1" and then the parks were built on the top of that sub-structure. But they didn't carry that over to the parking concept instead opting for miles of paved flat lots serviced by diesel-chugging trains and a much fancier monorail system between a few of the parks in Florida.

Why would anyone want to have plants growing atop their multi-million dollar buildings? I see what havoc plants wreak in cement works when they take root in a crack and turn it into a gaping chasm.

If Apple wants to throw a couple of tress on its structures then more power to them. Since doing so obviously has PR power perhaps they can plant enough trees to "balance out" the fact that they produce their products in a hostile country via de facto prison labor; how much fallout will this HQ site get according to China's recently released plan to nuke California?

I do not believe that anyone should be forced to plant "green roofs". My local government is always talking about it and no good has ever come from that...

This kind of innovation should be happening more frequently in architecture in the United States. Very awesome goals and super incredible plans. Underground parking for cars should be a standard feature in all office complexes. Endless lots of pavement above ground are perhaps cost effective, but a huge environmental issue.

As a tangent, but a company with JUST as much money ... Disney should not have acres of land for surface parking, especially at Epcot. It would be nice if they took notes from some sustainable developers.

I think Apple will need to do a better job of hiding the power button for the compound though, it's right there in the middle.

All the visitors to Disney having to park in a parking garage? The logistics of that seem hellish. I wonder how funky an enclosed parking garage would get in the humid clime of Florida.

BTW, how on Earth is a "green roof" sustainable development? The trees don't the materials equal to those used to build the parking garages and the trees and other plants seek to destroy the cement (as they're designed to do) not "sustain" it.

It's green because 1.) it reduces the albedo and heatsoak of the area which would otherwise be a nice black solar-sucking asphalt plate 2.) at least to a tiny degree reintroduces plant life where again, there would otherwise be a sterile lifeless tract, so carbon footprint is marginally tuned down, and 3.) substantially increases the insulation of the building without need for artificial sources like fiberglass, polyurethane foam, or the dead trees that come with cellulose.

the only drawback to a green roof is the extra structure needed to support the weight of soil, water, and plant-life. And considering how over-engineered some of these buildings are, you're probably not adding all that much more to the structure. as far as penetration, that can largely be controlled with impermeable membranes and good volume of soil. Plant roots grow seeking water and nutrients. give them enough good soil and it's no different than a geranium which does not shatter its terra cotta planter or an oak tree which does not chew up bedrock.